Sunday, January 23, 2011

I am fail, but this soup is not

Ok, so this the first time I’ve written not only on this blog, but on ANY blog in general. It's been a while since this blog was started and it's pretty sad this is the first time I'm posting, sorry to all the hungry people out there. I’m the other nerdy girl, Cymone, and I handle the yummy stuff to eat. Just don’t mix up your food with your make-up, it might not taste that good then.

For the love of God, please don't mix make-up and dicing!

So, I love tomato soup when it’s chilly outside and considering it’s in the 30s here in Florida I’d say it’s cold enough. For those of you living in colder areas…sucks to be you! While you’re inside trying to keep warm you might as well make some yummy soup! This recipe makes about 6 servings and takes about a half hour to make. So here’s the ingredients you’ll need:

So, I’ll throw in some general cooking tips while I’m at it: ALWAYS buy unsalted butter, you can put however much salt you want afterwards. Plus if you need unsalted butter for baking or something you don’t need to buy more butter! YAY! For the garlic, I personally like using fresh garlic and mince it myself but feel free to use the prepackaged stuff to save time. For the tomatoes, I prefer getting canned whole tomatoes so that way I can scoop the seeds out before they go in the pot, I don’t think anybody likes tomato seeds floating around in their soup. For the bay leaves, go with the dried stuff but for the basil you definitely want to go with fresh basil. Dried basil will not do this soup justice since you need that oil that fresh basil lets off. If you can’t get fresh basil it may be better to just skip it all together instead of paying $3 for dried basil. If you have some dried basil and want to use it, the conversion for fresh to dry herbs is 1 tablespoon fresh=1 teaspoon dry (so 2 teaspoons dry basil)

So first, you’ll want to mince the garlic and dice the celery and onion, I typically just go for as small as possible. Once that’s done you’ll want to break out the saucepan and melt the butter over medium heat.

This is a saucepan, smiley face optional

Add in your celery, onions, and garlic and let it cook for 4 minutes. Turn the heat to low and stir in the flour. This is the roux for your soup if you want to sound super smart to people nearby and it’s what thickens the soup. After stirring and getting a nice, smooth roux add in the broth, tomatoes, tomato paste, bay leaves, and sugar (the sugar helps cut some of the acidity of the tomatoes) and bring it to a boil. Once it starts boiling, turn the heat to medium and let it simmer for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, take out the 2 bay leaves, toss in the basil, and give it a stir. Then, carefully put all of your soup in the blender and hit puree, you want it to have a smooth texture. If it doesn't all fit then just do it in two batches.

This, however, does not go in the blender

If you don’t have a blender or some kind of food choppy device then you probably should go with diced tomatoes and enjoy a more “rustic” tomato soup (a.k.a. chunky). After the soup is all blended, stir in the cream and season with salt and pepper. For a super delicious finish, once you’ve dished up a bowl of delicious tomato soup, top it with some fresh grated parmesan and croutons (personally I like the garlic & cheese kind). Dig in!